Category Archives: Event

Admission of the Proctors

17th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Event, Oxford University Archives, Spotlight, Uncategorized,

Every year, on the Wednesday of the 9th week of Hilary Term, the University admits its new Proctors and Assessor to office. These are senior officers of the University, responsible for scrutiny and discipline, whose role is to oversee student matters and uphold the University’s statutes and policies. The two Proctors (a Senior Proctor and a Junior Proctor) and the Assessor are selected from the fellows of three colleges (one for each) on a rota basis and each officer holds their position full-time for 12 months.

The role of the Proctor is ancient. First referred to in 1248, the two Proctors were the principal officers of the University, along with the Chancellor. They were responsible for discipline and order, both in terms of academic studies and conduct. At first the Proctors were chosen from among the fellows of colleges, one Proctor for each of the two ‘nations’ into which the University was divided at that time. The Senior Proctor was chosen by the ‘southerners’ and the Junior Proctor by the ‘northerners’. The procedure for their election was complex until 1574 when they began to be elected annually by Convocation (the body of MAs of the University at that time). This lasted until the early seventeenth century when, following a number of rigged elections and some chaotic and pretty violent meetings of Convocation, a new way of selecting the Proctors had to be devised.

Illuminated transcript of the Proctorial cycle, 31 December 1628 (OUA/Long Box 21/2)

The Proctorial cycle, instituted in 1628 at the initiative of King Charles I and the Chancellor of the University, William Laud, established the basis of the current system of selecting the Proctors from each college in turn. Drawn up by two mathematicians, the prearranged order (at that time spanning 23 years) was designed to avoid the conflict of recent years and ensure that the larger colleges didn’t dominate the process (although they did have more frequent turns).

The new cycle came into effect in 1629 and ten full cycles had been completed by the time a new cycle was introduced in 1859. Later amendments have since been made to the cycle to incorporate new colleges and halls; and from 1960 the women’s colleges were permitted to elect a Representative, now known as the Assessor. The Assessor was formally incorporated into the Proctorial cycle in 1978.

The incoming Proctors and Assessor are admitted to office each March at a ceremony held, in recent years, in the Sheldonian Theatre. Due to the pandemic, the 2020 ceremony took place without an audience, and the 2021 ceremony was held online. This year’s admission ceremony, on Wednesday 16 March, is the first to be held in person and in full for three years.

Senior and Junior Proctors’ copies of the Laudian Statutes, 1636 (OUA/WPgamma/25c/3-4)

Senior and Junior Proctors’ copies of the Laudian Statutes, 1636 (OUA/WPgamma/25c/3-4)

As part of the ceremony, the incoming Proctors place their hands on two ancient volumes of University statutes while they swear their oaths of office. These are copies of the 1636  Laudian Statutes held in the University Archives. The Laudian Statutes, so named because their compilation took place under the Chancellorship of William Laud, represented a watershed moment in the history of the University: it was the first time that all the University’s statutes and regulations had been brought together and recorded in one place. They remained at the heart of University governance for several centuries.

The copies of the statutes used in the ceremony were specially made  in 1636 for the Senior and Junior Proctors.  They were to be their personal copies, handed down from Proctor to Proctor as the most important tool for their job. They have recently been handsomely recovered in leather wrappers, fit for their ceremonial role. The statutes are personally escorted to and from the ceremony each year by staff of the University Archives.

The statutes are of course no longer current, but along with a bunch of historic keys which is handed to the Proctors during the ceremony, they are symbols of the ancient but continuing power which the Proctors hold within the University.

 

Conference Report: IIPC Web Archiving Conference 2021

21st century, Digital archives, Event, Modern, Social Sciences, Web Archives, , ,

This year’s International Internet Preservation Consortium Web Archiving Conference was held online from 15-16th June 2021, bringing together professionals from around the world to share their experiences of preserving the Web as a research tool for future generations. In this blog post, Simon Mackley reports back on some of the highlights from the conference.  

How can we best preserve the World Wide Web for future researchers, and how can we best provide access to our collections? These were the questions that were at the forefront of this year’s International Internet Preservation Consortium Web Archiving Conference, which was hosted virtually by the National Library of Luxembourg. Web archiving is a subject of particular interest to me: as one of the Bodleian Library’s Graduate Trainee Digital Archivists, I spend a lot of my time working on our own Web collections as part of the Bodleian Libraries Web Archive. It was great therefore to have the chance to attend part of this virtual conference and hear for myself about new developments in the sector.

One thing that really struck me from the conference was the huge diversity in approaches to preserving the Web. On the one hand, many of the papers concerned large-scale efforts by national legal deposit institutions. For instance, Ivo Branco, Ricardo Basílio, and Daniel Gomes gave a very interesting presentation on the creation of the 2019 European Parliamentary Elections collection at the Portuguese Web Archive. This was a highly ambitious project, with the aim of crawling not just the Portuguese Web domain but also capturing a snapshot of elections coverage across 24 different European languages through the use of an automated search engine and a range of web crawler technologies (see their blog for more details). The World Wide Web is perhaps the ultimate example of an international information resource, so it is brilliant to see web archiving initiatives take a similarly international approach.

At the other end of the scale, Hélène Brousseau gave a fascinating paper on community-based web archiving at Artexte library and research centre, Canada. Within the arts community, websites often function as digital publications analogous to traditional exhibition catalogues. Brousseau emphasised the need for manual web archiving rather than automated crawling as a means of capturing the full content and functionality of these digital publications, and at Artexete this has been achieved by training website creators to self-archive their own websites using Conifer. Given that in many cases web archivists often have minimal or even no contact with website creators, it was fascinating to hear of an approach that places creators at the very heart of the process.

It was also really interesting to hear about the innovative new ways that web archives were engaging with researchers using their collections, particularly in the use of new ‘Labs’-style approaches. Marie Carlin and Dorothée Benhamou-Suesser for instance reported on the new services being planned for researchers at the Bibliothèque nationale de France Data Lab, including a crawl-on-demand service and the provision of web archive datasets. New methodologies are always being developed within the Digital Humanities, and so it is vitally important that web archives are able to meet the evolving needs of researchers.

Like all good conferences, the papers and discussions did not solely focus on the successes of the past year, but also explored the continued challenges of web archiving and how they can be addressed. Web archiving is often a resource-intensive activity, which can prove a significant challenge for collecting institutions. This was a major point of discussion in the panel session on web archiving the coronavirus pandemic, as institutions had to balance the urgency of quickly capturing web content during a fast-evolving crisis against the need to manage resources for the longer-term, as it became apparent that the pandemic would last months rather than weeks. It was clear from the speakers that no two institutions had approached documenting the pandemic in quite the same way, but nonetheless some very useful general lessons were drawn from the experiences, particularly about the need to clearly define collection scope and goals at the start of any collecting project dealing with rapidly changing events.

The question of access presents an even greater challenge. We ultimately work to preserve the Web so that researchers can make use of it, but as a sector we face significant barriers in delivering this goal. The larger legal deposit collections, for instance, can often only be consulted in the physical reading rooms of their collecting libraries. In his opening address to the conference, Claude D. Conter of the National Library of Luxembourg addressed this problem head-on, calling for copyright reform in order to meet reader expectations of access.

Yet although these challenges may be significant, I have no doubt from the range of new and innovative approaches showcased at this conference that the web archiving sector will be able to overcome them. I am delighted to have had the chance to attend the conference, and I cannot wait to see how some of the projects presented continue to develop in the years to come.

Simon Mackley

Keeping the university reading

Event,

Our approach is to prioritise the safety of our staff and readers, whilst working hard to make it possible to ‘Keep the University reading’.

You might not be able to come to the Bod, but the Bod can come to you.

Library buildings
Our public spaces (e.g. exhibition galleries) were closed from 9am on 17 March 2020.

All library sites and reading rooms will close to readers until further notice. Bodleian Health Care Libraries will be open 24/7 unstaffed, to support our clinical and NHS communities.

Library services
Our physical services will be suspended, whilst we both continue and expand our digital services.

1. eResources. The Bodleian provides access to over 118k eJournals, and over 1.4m eBooks. Our priority is to maintain access to these, and to add to the eResources that we provide for the Oxford community. All accessible through SOLO. More details can be found here.

2. Scan-and-deliver. This service, scanning materials for readers from collections at the Book Storage Facility and accessed through SOLO, will become free of charge for all library card holders. A new service, ‘Scan-and-deliver+’ (accessed here) will provide scans of material in Oxford library locations.

3. Oxford Reading Lists Online (ORLO). The ORLO service provides students with online reading lists linked to library and open access resources and can be used in Canvas or through its own user interface. ORLO currently holds 1,000+ lists for the current academic year in support of 22+ departments from across the academic divisions. We are instigating a rapid roll-out to other courses. More details can be found here.

4. Loans. All books currently on loan will be auto-renewed until 19 June 2020. Please hold on to books you have out, do not return them. Any fines will be waived. We are considering other options to reintroduce lending on a limited basis, in the future.

5. Inter-Library-Loans (ILL). Electronic delivery will soon be available free of charge (accessed here), but physical ILL is suspended.

6. Oxford University Research Archive (ORA). The ORA service (accessed here) will continue in support of open access to Oxford research, and in support of REF.

7. eReference/enquiries. We have expanded our Live Chat service, available 9am–7pm every day from Monday 23 March, available from our website, LibGuides or SOLO.  Remote assistance from expert library staff is available by emailing reader.services@bodleian.ox.ac.uk (staffed weekdays, 9am–5pm).

While we are working hard to ensure we can maintain our digital services, and expand them where possible, we will be able to do this only when it does not compromise the health and safety of our staff.

Please visit the Bodleian website and social media channels for regular updates.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Richard Ovenden, OBE
Bodley’s Librarian

Note: Many digital services, like our catalogue SOLO or ORA are accessible to all, while some of the services and resources noted above are restricted to Bodleian Libraries card holders (Single Sign On required).

Emily Hobhouse, Oxfam, and humanitarian handicrafts

19th century, 20th century, Event, Exhibitions and displays, Humanities, Modern, ,

On Thursday and Friday, 27 and 28 June, ‘Humanitarian Handicrafts: Materiality, Development and Fair Trade. A Re-evaluation’, a collaboration between the University of Huddersfield, Leeds Beckett University and the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute of the University of Manchester, brought together historians, curators, archivists and craft practitioners to explore handicraft production for humanitarian purposes from the late 19th century to the present. Subjects ranged from the work of the humanitarian reformer, Emily Hobhouse (1860-1926), founder of Boer Home Industries in the aftermath of the 1899-1902 South African War, through lace-making in Belgium during WW1 and initiatives in Eastern Europe after WW2, to the work of the Huddersfield Committee for Famine Relief (‘Hudfam’) and Oxfam from the late 1950s.

Oxfam’s handicrafts story and its archive were featured strongly at the conference in papers on ‘Helping by Selling’ from 1963, Oxfam’s scheme for the purchase of handicrafts from producers in poor countries for sale in the U.K., the proceeds being returned as grants for humanitarian work; the foundation of Oxfam’s ‘Bridge’ fair trade organisation in 1975, the first in the U.K. and probably in Europe; and the development of the International Federation for Alternative Trade, later the World Fair Trade Organisation, with Oxfam’s support. In addition, the work of Cecil Jackson-Cole was considered. Jackson-Cole, a founder and long-term Hon. Secretary of Oxfam, went on to found charities including Help the Aged and ActionAid and was instrumental in opening charity shops in South Africa in the 1970s.

'Bridge' poster

‘Bridge’ poster, Oxfam archive

On Thursday evening, the Emily Hobhouse Letters, a project to recover Hobhouse’s contribution to international peace, relief and reconstruction in South Africa and Europe, launched its travelling exhibition, ‘War Without Glamour’, which draws extensively on documents from her archive held at the Bodleian. A display of items from the archive will open on 21 September in the Old Library Proscholium. See:

https://emilyhobhouselettersproject.wordpress.com/exhibition/

Emily Hobhouse

Emily Hobhouse (1860-1926)

Sixth British Library Labs Symposium

21st century, Event, , ,

On Monday November 12, 2018 I was fortunate enough to attend the annual British Library Labs Symposium. During the symposium the British Library showcases the projects that they have been working on for their digital collections and issues awards to those who either contributed to those projects or used the digital collections to create their own projects.

According to Adam Farquhar, Head of Digital Scholarship at the British Library, this year’s symposium was their biggest and best attended yet: a testimony to the growing importance of digitization, as well as digital preservation and curation, within both archives and libraries.

This year’s theme of 3D models and scanning was wonderfully introduced by Daniel Prett, Head of Digital and IT at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, in his keynote lecture on ‘The Value, Impact and Importance of experimenting with Cultural Heritage Digital Collections’. He explained how, during his time with the British Museum, they began to experiment with the creation of digital 3D models. This eventually lead to the purchase of a rig with multiple camera’s allowing them to take better quality photos in less time. At the Fitzmuseum, Prett has continued to advocate the development of 3D imaging. The museum now even offers free 3D imaging workshops open to anyone who is in possession of a laptop and any device that has a camera (including a smartphone).

Although Prett shared much of his other successful projects with us, he also emphasized that much of digitization is about trial and error, and stressed the importance recording those errors. Unfortunately, libraries and archives alike are prone to celebrate their successes, but cover-up their errors, even though we may learn just as much from them. Prett called upon all attendees to more frequently share their errors, so we may learn from each other.

During the break I wandered into a separate room where individuals and companies showcased the projects that they developed in relation to the digital libraries special collections. A lucky few managed to lay their hands on a VR headset in order to experience Project Lume (a virtual data simulation program) and part of the exhibition by Nomad. The British Library itself showcased their own digitization services, including 360° spin photography and 3D imaging. The latter lead to some interesting discussions about the de- and re-contextualization of artworks when using 3D imaging technology.

In the midst of all this there was one stand that did not lure its spectators with fancy technology or gadgets. Instead, Jonah Coman, winner of the BL Teaching & Learning Award, showcased the small zines that he created. The format of these Pocket Miscellany, as they are called, are inspired by small medieval manuscripts and are intended to inform their readers about marginalized bodies, disability and queerness in medieval literature. Due to copyright issues these zines are not available for purchase, but can be found on Coman’s Patreon website.

The BL labs symposium also showed how the digital collections of the British Library can inspire both art and fashion. Fashion designer Nabil Nayal, who unfortunately could not accept his BL labs Commercial Award in person, for example, had used the Elizabethan digital collections as inspiration for the collection he presented at the British Library during the London Fashion week.

Artist Richard Wright, on the other hand, looked to the library’s infrastructure for inspiration. This resulted in The Elastic System, a virtual mosaic of hundreds of the British Library books that together make-up a sketch of Thomas Watts. When you zoom in on the mosaic you can browse the books in detail and can even order them through a link to the BL’s catalogue that is integrated in the picture. Once a book is checked out, it reveals the pictures of BL employees working in the stacks to collect the books. It thereby slowly reveals a part of the library that is usually hidden from view.

Another fascinating talk was given by artist Michael Takeo Magruder about his exhibition on Imaginary Cities which will be staged at the British Library’s entrance hall from 5 April to 14 July 2019. Magruder is using the library’s 19th and early 20th century maps collection to create new and ever changing maps and simulations of virtual, fantastical cities. Try as I might, I fear I cannot do justice to Magruder’s unique and intriguing artwork with words alone and can therefore only urge you to go visit the exhibition this coming year.

These are only a few of the wonderful talks that were given during the Labs symposium. The British Labs symposium was a real eye opener for me. I did not realize just how quickly the field of 3D imaging had developed within the museum and library world. Nor did I realize how digital collections could be used, not simply to inspire, but create actual artworks.

Yet, one of the things that struck me most is how much the development of and advocacy for the use of digital collections within archives and libraries is spurred on by passionate individuals; be they artists who use digital collections to inspire their work, digital- and IT-specialists willing to sacrifice a lunch break or two for the sake of progress or individual scholars who create little zines to spread awareness about a topic they feel passionate about. Imagine what they can do if initiatives like the BL labs continue to bring such people together. I, for one, cannot wait to see what the future for digital collections and scholarship holds. On to next year’s symposium.

 

DCDC 2018: Memory and Transformation

Event

Entitled ‘Memory and Transformation’, this year’s DCDC conference (Discovering Collections Discovering Communities) sought to bring together a variety of practitioners from different cultural sectors including museums, libraries and archives to discuss the importance of memory management across the cultural heritage sector and the duty of archives as memory institutions in ensuring our rich past is not forgotten but routinely remembered, commemorated and celebrated.

Celebrating Anniversaries: The Memory Milestones of History

In an opening keynote Jane Ellison (Head of Creative Partnership, BBC) stressed the need for archivists as custodians of memory to mark important anniversaries through a regular programme of outreach events and activities to ensure past histories are not overlooked or misinterpreted but suitably commemorated. Ellison discussed the pivotal role of the BBC Archives in facilitating such events including the recent centenary anniversary of the First World War through the provision of archival memories including: photographs, first-hand accounts from the front line and oral histories. In employing archival evidence we help to honour our history in the truest form possible, adding colour to past events and bringing them to life in a way simply retelling stories from the front line would struggle to achieve. In bringing the keynote to a close Ellison ended with a thought-provoking quote taken from the Armistice day Sunday service which really brought home the importance and duty of archives to act in an effort to remember well,  “we are not responsible for what happened in history but we are responsible for remembering it well”.

Recalling Past Memories: The Role of Archives in Dementia Care

An example of a memory box

Having had the opportunity to work with individuals suffering from dementia In the past I have experienced first-hand the life-altering impact the condition can have both on the individual and their friends and family. It was extremely refreshing therefore to have the opportunity to hear from Sophie Clapp (Boots UK Archive) about the therapeutic role archives can play in helping to revive forgotten memories and transform the lives of people living with dementia.

Reminiscence Therapy: The Value of Memory Boxes

Through their work with Professor Victoria Tischler (Head of Dementia Care at the University of West London) Boots UK Archive have been able to develop multi-sensory memory boxes for care home residents living with dementia. Boxes include specially selected items from the Boots Archive which houses over ten thousand items including recipes, formulations and health-care products thought to trigger memories of nostalgia. From carbolic soap to Devonshire bath salt, the smell of these items was reported to have a powerful impact on dementia sufferers enabling them to recall past memories and strike up conversations, sparking new hope for researchers and families of those living with dementia.

The Power of Archival Memories

It was wonderful to attend the DCDC conference this year and learn more about the power of archives beyond their traditional research, evidential and community value as memory institutions with a duty and ability to commemorate historic milestones, acquire archival memories of different cultures and even provide reminiscence therapies.

IHR History Day 2018: Exploring our collections

Event, , ,

Ahead of History Day 2018, in which the Bodleian will be in attendance, we thought we would explore the Bodleian Libraries Special Collections by asking our colleagues which items in the Special Collections are their favourites and why. The Bodleian Libraries’ Special Collections (at the Weston Library) holds the second largest collection of manuscripts and archives in Britain, the library holds collections in the following subject areas:

For a full breakdown of subjects see the Weston Library’s subject guides.

The following responses showcase the variety and depth of the materials held at the Bodleian, and also provide a unique insight into those that work with collections on a day to day basis.

Catherine McIlwaine, Archivist: Hodgkin’s Nobel Prize

Dorothy Hodgkin was an extraordinary chemist and x-ray crystallographer. During her long career at Oxford, as a Fellow at Somerville College, she determined the structure of penicillin, vitamin B12 and insulin. In 1964 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. She received the news when she was in Ghana visiting her husband, Thomas. They sent a telegram to their daughter, Liz, who was teaching at a school in Zambia, and to keep costs down, they sent the shortest possible message, ‘Dorothy nobel chemistry’!. She is still the only British female scientist to have received a Nobel Prize.

                                       Telegram sent to Dorothy Hodgkin, 1964

The Bodleian holds an extensive archive relating to her life and career and this telegram is part of an additional donation of family papers made in 2014 by her daughter Liz.
MS. Eng. c. 8262, fol. 134

Charlotte McKillop-Mash, Project archivist: Admiral Lord John Fisher’s letter

This is an August 1912 letter from 71-year old former first sea lord Admiral Lord John Fisher to Francis Hopwood, who was a senior civil servant serving as an additional civil lord of the Admiralty.

Fisher retired from the Admiralty in 1910 but kept himself busy by chairing a royal commission on fuel oil, strongly advocating for Britain to build more submarines, and firing off effusive and opinionated letters about rearmament. An unorthodox and radical reformer during his time in the Admiralty, Fisher was a ferociously energetic and outspoken man who, unsurprisingly, alienated plenty of his colleagues along the way.

Fisher was often outspoken in his opinions, which on occasion caused alarm. Perhaps the most notorious example was his recommendation to Edward VII in 1904 that the British should ‘Copenhagen’ the German fleet—that is, emulate the example of Nelson and attack the German fleet in Kiel before it grew too powerful [DNB]

In 1914 Winston Churchill, then first lord of the Admiralty, re-appointed Fisher as first sea lord.

The Letter reads:

Eng. c. 7351/4, fol. 48, recto

Dear Hopwood – Lane’s letter splendid! I’ve written to him. All our experts want shoving over the precipice! I heard one d-d fool the other day say “Well, thank God! We’ve not killed 15 men like the Nuremberg firm in experiments with internal combustion engines!” We ought to be heartily ashamed that we have not killed any one!

What we want is a real bloody war to re-invigorate us!

The real serious thing is that the Germans will have 14 vessels at sea with the Internal Combustion Engines before we have one, thus gaining inestimable experience. We are awfully behind!

Eng. c. 7351/4, fol. 48, verso

And we are going deliberately to order steam oil-tankers instead of their being one & all fitted with oil engines! It’s damnable! All to save a little money – no other reason! All our experts expect the Internal Combustion Engine to be perfection before adoption. They strain at the gnat of perfection and swallow the camel of un-readiness! They expect the 100,000 Horse power Internal Combustion Engines of the 32 knot armoured cruiser “Non-Pareil” to emerge perfect like Minerva out of the head of Jupiter!

Yours till charcoal sprouts!

Fisher 24.8.12

The letter can be found in the Papers of Francis John Stephens Hopwood, Baron Southborough, 1737-1945. Shelfmark: Eng. c. 7351/4, fol. 48

 

Jeremy Mcllwaine, Senior Archivist: Conservative Party’s Official Christmas Card, 1938

My favourite item is from the Conservative Party Archive, it is the Conservative Party’s official Christmas card from 1938, when the Party was riding high in the polls on the back of Chamberlain’s success in preventing war over Czechoslovakia in September 1938, and features a facsimile of the supplementary agreement reached between Chamberlain and Hitler at Munich on 30th September, 1938.

Conservative Party’s Official Christmas Card, 1938 featuring Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler 

I like this item because it never fails to shock students when I show it to them during inductions on how to use archival material – not only because the idea of a British prime minister shaking hands and smiling with Hitler, who is wearing a swastika armband, seems so appalling, but because the Conservative Party chose to feature such a document within a Christmas card. But it also shows the danger of allowing hindsight to influence our interpretation of history. Chamberlain’s reputation has suffered ever since Munich because, as a policy, appeasement ultimately failed to prevent the Second World War. But at the time, there was widespread support in the country for avoiding war at all costs, even to the point of allowing Czechoslovakia to be sacrificed. On his return, Chamberlain received thousands of gifts from a grateful public, including a silver dinner service. Consideration was even given to calling a general election in order to reap the benefit of Chamberlain’s popularity, and the Conservatives would undoubtedly have won a landslide.

Historians will continue to debate appeasement and Chamberlain’s role in it, and whether, perhaps, he was right to pursue it, merely to buy Britain enough time to re-arm and prepare for War. The Christmas card is such a small document, but it represents so much controversy, not to mention a blatant example by a political party attempting to make political capital out of a crisis situation.

The postcard can be found in the Weston Library’s Conservative Party Archive, Shelfmark: CRD/D/3/1/3

Stuart Ackland, Bodleian Map Room: Clark’s Chart of the World

Population maps such as this are, in the field of cartography, a relatively recent product, with the first known examples being published in the early 1800s. Early maps would give tables showing population figures, this example from 1822 has one that is Christian only and colours parts of the World depending on the ‘Degrees of Civilization’.

Clark’s Chart of the World, 2nd ed, 1822. (E) B1 (151)

On the map’s coloured coded key the list of degrees of civilisations range from: ‘Savage’, ‘Barbarians’, ‘Half Civilised’, ‘Civilized’ and ‘Enlightened’.  In its religion section, the map  only covers Christianity (and its various denominations) and ‘Mahomedan’, with all others being listed as ‘Pagan’. The map provides a fascinating insight into British society’s views on the wider world in the 1800s.

Inset of Clark’s Map showing population table and legend

For other posts about the Bodleian’s maps see the The Bodleian Map Room blog.

Matthew Neely, Senior Archivist: The two Presidents

My favourite item is an entry for 11 June 1961 from Macmillan’s diary. In June 1961, John F. Kennedy arrived in London on his first visit as US President. Although somewhat apprehensive of the new youthful President, Macmillan and Kennedy soon forged a close relationship. Macmillan took the opportunity to record in his diary a comparison of his relationships with Eisenhower and Kennedy, contrasting the instinctive style of Eisenhower with the intellectually inquisitive approach of Kennedy.

Cecil Stoughton. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

The entry can be found in the Catalogue of the papers of Harold Macmillan, 1889-1987 Shelfmark: Macmillan dep. d. 42, fol. 69

We look forward to seeing everyone at the Bodleian’s stand for History Day 2018  at Senate House, London on the 27th of March 2018 where we will be sharing information about our collections. Make sure to come and say hello.

Co-edited by Carl Cooper and Ben Peirson-Smith.

DPC Email Preservation: How Hard Can It Be? Part 2

21st century, Digital archives, Event, Event, Modern, Uncategorized

Source: https://lu2cspjiis-flywheel.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/email-marketing.jpg

In July last year my colleague Miten and I attended a DPC Briefing Day titled Email Preservation: How Hard Can It Be?  which introduced me to the work of the Task Force on Technical Approaches to Email Archives  and we were lucky enough to attend the second session last week.

Arranging a second session gave Chris Prom (@chrisprom), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Kate Murray (@fileformatology), Library of Congress, co-chair’s of the Task Force the opportunity to reflect upon and add the issues raised from the first session to the Task Force Report, and provided the event attendees with an update on their progress overall, in anticipation of their final report scheduled to be published some time in April.

“Using Email Archives in Research”

The first guest presentation was given by Dr. James Baker (@j_w_baker), University of Sussex, who was inspired to write about the use of email archives within research by two key texts; Born-digital archives at the Wellcome Library: appraisal and sensitivity review of two hard drives (2016), an article by Victoria Sloyan, and Dust (2001) a book by Carolyn Steedman.

These texts led Dr. Baker to think of the “imagination of the archive” as he put it, the mystique of archival research, stemming from the imagery of  19th century research processes. He expanded on this idea, stating “physically and ontologically unique; the manuscript, is no longer what we imagine to be an archive”.

However, despite this new platform for research, Dr. Baker stated that very few people outside of archive professionals know that born-digital archives exist, yet alone use them. This is an issue, as archives require evidence of use, therefore, we need to encourage use.

To address this, Dr. Baker set up a Born-Digital Access Workshop, at the Wellcome Library in collaboration with their Collections Information Team, where he gathered people who use born-digital archives and the archivists who make them, and provided them with a set of 4 varying case-studies. These 4 case-studies were designed to explore the following:

A) the “original” environment; hard drive files in a Windows OS
B) the view experience; using the Wellcome’s Viewer
C) levels of curation; comparing reformatted and renamed collections with unaltered ones
D) the physical media; asking does the media hold value?

Several interesting observations came out of this workshop, which Dr. Baker organised in to three areas:

  1. Levels of description; filenames are important, and are valuable data in themselves to researchers. Users need a balance between curation and an authentic representation of the original order.
  2. “Bog-standard” laptop as access point; using modern technology that is already used by many researchers as the mode of access to email and digital archives creates a sense of familiarity when engaging with the content.
  3. Getting the researcher from desk to archive; there is a substantial amount of work needed to make the researcher aware of the resources available to them and how – can they remote access, how much collection level description is necessary?

Dr. Baker concluded that even with outreach and awareness events such as the one we were all attending, born-digital archives are not yet accessible to researchers, and this has made me realise the digital preservation community must push for access solutions,  and get these out to users, to enable researchers to gain the insights they might from our digital collections.

“Email as a Corporate Record”

The third presentation of the day was given by James Lappin (@JamesLappin), Loughborough University, who discussed the issues involved in applying archival policies to emails in a governmental context.

His main point concerned the routine deletion of email that happens in governments around the world. He said there are no civil servants email accounts scheduled to be saved past the next 3 – 4 years – but, they may be available via a different structure; a kind of records management system. However, Lappin pointed out the crux in this scenario: government departments have no budget to move and save many individuals email accounts, and no real idea of the numerics: how much to save, how much can be saved?

“email is the record of our age” – James Lappin

Lappin suggested an alternative: keep the emails of the senior staff only, however, this begs the questions, how do we filter out sensitive and personal content?

Lappin posits that auto-deletion is the solution, aiming to spare institutions from unmanageable volumes of email and the consequential breach of data protection.
Autodeletion encourages:

  •  governments to kickstart email preservation action,
  • the integration of tech for records management solutions,
  • actively considering the value of emails for long-term preservation

But how do we transfer emails to a EDRMS, what structures do we use, how do we separate individuals, how do we enforce the transfer of emails? These issues are to be worked out, and can be, Lappin argues, if we implement auto-deletion as tool to make email preservation less daunting , as at the end of the day, the current goal is to retain the “important” emails, which will make both government departments and historians happy, and in turn, this makes archivists happy. This does indeed seem like a positive scenario for us all!

However, it was particularly interesting when Lappin made his next point: what if the very nature of email, as intimate and immediate, makes governments uncomfortable with the idea of saving and preserving governmental correspondence? Therefore, governments must be more active in their selection processes, and save something, rather than nothing – which is where the implementation of auto-deletion, could, again, prove useful!

To conclude, Lappin presented a list of characteristics which could justify the preservation of an individuals government email accounts, which included:

  • The role they play is of historic interest
  • They expect their account to be permanently preserved
  • They are given the chance to flag or remove personal correspondence
  • Access to personal correspondence is prevented except in case of overriding legal need

I, personally, feel this fair and thorough, but only time will tell what route various governments take.

On a side note: Lappin runs an excellent comic-based blog on Records Management which you can see here.

Conclusions
One of the key issues that stood out for me today was, maybe surprisingly, not to do with the technology used in email preservation, but how to address the myriad issues email preservation brings to light, namely the feasibility of data protection, sensitivity review and appraisal, particularly prevalent when dealing in such vast quantities of material.

Email can only be preserved once we have defined what constitutes ’email’ and how to proceed ethically, morally and legally. Then, we can move forward with the implementation of the technical frameworks, which have been designed to meet our pre-defined requirements, that will enable access to historically valuable, and information rich, email archives, that will yield much in the name of research.

In the tweet below, Evil Archivist succinctly reminds us of the importance of maintaining and managing our digital records…

A sympathy for strangers: Oxfam and the history of humanitarianism

19th century, 20th century, Event, Event, Humanities, Modern, Social Sciences, , , , , , , ,

On Tuesday 31st October the Oxfam Archive Assistants attended a lecture at St Antony’s College by Princeton University’s Professor Jeremy Adelman, entitled Towards a Global History of Humanitarianism. Professor Adelman’s focus was primarily the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but his narrative had implications for the way we might view contemporary humanitarian agencies such as Oxfam.

 

Historians have not always been kind in their assessments of international humanitarianism. Alex de Waal was broadly critical of the role such agencies have played when dealing with famine on the African continent: by supplying aid externally, he argues, they inadvertently undermine the democratic accountability of African governments, disincentivizing humanitarian intervention or crisis prevention as a way of preserving political power.[1] To an extent, Adelman spoke in a similar vein: abolitionists may have helped stimulate the rise of humanitarianism in the nineteenth century but colonial penetration itself was often justified in terms of humanitarian intervention, where the white settler was morally and ethically obliged to ‘civilize’ the unsophisticated ‘native’. Humanitarian discourse, Adelman argued, is by its nature racialized, and it invariably reinforces the self-image of Western nations as occupying the apex of a civilizational hierarchy.

 

This might seem somewhat damning of all Oxfam does and stands for. However, Adelman also spoke of a ‘sympathy for strangers’ which grew out of increasing global connectedness and integration as telegraph cables, railways and steamships curtailed the spatial and intellectual distances between disparate peoples. The camera was, according to Adelman, a fundamental technological innovation in this respect and the relationship between photography and humanitarianism has in many ways been central to the development of charities like Oxfam. Borrowing from Susan Sontag, Adelman suggested that ‘moral witnesses’ – i.e., photographers – record public memories of pain, creating a connection between the ‘victim’ – the subject of the photograph – and the viewer.

 

In the 19th century missionaries armed themselves with Kodak cameras, and by producing lantern slide shows of their experiences in foreign climes hoped to raise money for future missionary work. But in the Congo Free State, rendered a personal possession of King Leopold of Belgium in 1885, missionaries began to use their cameras to record atrocities committed against Congolese rubber plantation workers. In the face of international scrutiny – which admittedly was somewhat more self-interested than compassionate – King Leopold was forced to cede Congo as a personal asset. It could certainly be argued that such photographs exploited the pain of others, titillating public interest at home without any true empathy for or understanding of the Congolese people. According to Susan Sontag, the ‘knowledge gained through still photographs will always be some kind of sentimentalism, whether cynical or humanist’.[2]

 

 

But the power of the photograph to reinforce moral or empathetic feeling can be – and has been – used for the genuine betterment of others. From 1957 to the early 1960s Oxfam sent simple Christmas ‘appeal’ cards to its donors, featuring a simple ‘thank you’ message and photographs of individuals helped by the charity. A card from 1958 showed a huge-eyed little girl, sitting wrapped in a coat and woollen socks with a spoon stuck into a beaker of food. The caption read ‘This little Greek girl was found as a baby hungry and dying… Now she is properly fed… because Oxfam sends food, and years ago was able to plant black-currant bushes in her village which are now bearing fruit.’ This photograph does not simply broadcast the pain of strangers. It broadcasts hope, and promises resolution through charitable action. While a healthy scepticism and constructive interrogation of the conduct of international agencies is to be encouraged, we should be careful not to overlook and devalue the charitable efforts inspired by genuine ‘sympathy for strangers’.

[1] Alex de Waal, Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa (1997)

[2] Susan Sontag, On Photography (1973)